Submissions

Presterity rises to the challenge of tracking the enormous volume of concerning Trump administration news only through the help of people like you. If you follow the news and can craft a sentence, we'd like your help!

Presterity manages news submissions using an off-the-shelf group bookmarking tool called Raindrop. The project has no direct relationship with that product; it simply meets the needs of our project at this time. Raindrop has web, desktop, and mobile versions — but more importantly for this project, Raindrop has extensions for the popular web browsers so that you can start submitting a news article while you are reading it in your web browser.

Follow the instructions on this page to get set up with a Raindrop account and submit news to Presterity. It will take 15–30 minutes to complete these instructions and make your first submission.

By the end of this, you'll be set up as a citizen watchdog news finder! Once you're set up, you'll be able to click a button in your browser to bookmark news of concern, use a web app to add some details, and submit the news to us in just a few minutes.

Get set up to submit news with the Raindrop tool

Go to Raindrop at https://raindrop.io. Open that site in a new window or tab so you can keep these instructions handy as you use that site.

Read our style guidelines for bookmarks

Bookmarking an article

Once you're set up with Raindrop and have read our style guide, you're ready to make your first bookmark.

Follow these steps:

In your web browser, open a great news article, blog post, investigative piece, or tweet. It should document an event of interest.

Click the Raindrop button, shown with a little cloud icon, in your browser's toolbar. (This button should appear after you install the Raindrop browser extension, above.)

A Raindrop popup window will open, allowing you to fill in details about the article.

By default, Raindrop will propose saving the web page as a bookmark in a bookmark folder called Unsorted. Leave that folder selected. That will let you work on the bookmark details before submitting it to the project.

Click anywhere on the page outside the popup window to close it.

Raindrop has saved your new bookmark in your Unsorted folder, but you won't be able to work with that bookmark from this news site. Proceed to the next step.

Editing your bookmark

To edit the bookmark you've created:

Open your Raindrop bookmarks in the Raindrop web application at https://raindrop.io in a separate tab or window so that you can easily switch between Raindrop and the original news site.

In Raindrop, open your Unsorted folder and find the bookmark you just created. If you can't find it, try looking in the All folder.

Move your mouse over the bookmark, and click the Edit button on the right.

Did you suggest appropriate tags? Tags should have spaces between words, and no "#" hashtag.

Does the Title begins with a date in our year.month.day format, like "2017.01.20"?

Is the rest of the Title a complete sentence in the present tense and active voice?

Does the Title use sentence capitalization and have final punctuation?

If you've entered a Description, does it add vital context to the event (or is just the default Description picked up by Raindrop)?

You can keep a bookmark in your Unsorted folder while you're working on it. When you're satisfied with your bookmark, you're ready to submit it.

Sharing your bookmark with Presterity

In Raindrop, create a new "collection" for bookmarks you'd like to submit to Presterity.

Click the "New collection..." button in the bottom left corner.

When Raindrop asks for a name ("title") for your new collection, name it using your own email address in this pattern: "Shared by [email protected]". This is critical so that we have a way of knowing who is submitting the bookmarks. (If we use your submission on the site, your email address will not appear with it; it's just so that we can communicate with you if necessary.) The "Shared by" part will help you remember which Raindrop folder you are sharing with us.

Open your Unsorted folder, and drag the bookmark you created earlier into the Raindrop collection you created in the above step (the one named with your email address).

This will share your bookmark collection with Presterity, including any bookmarks in your collection at that time. More importantly, we'll also be able to see new bookmarks you move to your shared collection in the future.

Please

Follow our style guide. If we see simple errors (typos), we will do our best to fix them before posting, but please help us out by proofreading your bookmarks before submitting.

Save new bookmarks you gather in your Unsorted folder (or some other folder) before moving them into the folder you're sharing with us.

What happens after I submit a bookmark through Raindrop?

Presterity reviews all news submitted to the project as Raindrop bookmarks. When you share a new bookmark with the project, a Presterity volunteer will perform an initial review which includes proofreading, verifying that the submitted title and description match accurately reflect the contents of the linked news article (or blog post, etc.), and performing minor editing. Please allow a few days for this process.

Once someone has reviewed your bookmark, the bookmark will disappear from the collection you are sharing. If you would like to remember that article/page for your own reference, please make a separate bookmark for your own use. (At the moment, the Raindrop web app doesn't offer a way to copy a bookmark, although their desktop apps do offer this feature.)

Due to the volume of submissions, and the part-time availability of our project members, please understand that we may not be able to acknowledge your submission or let you know whether we ended up using it on the site. You can watch the Presterity site to see whether your submitted bookmark appears on the pages you tagged. We know that is not ideal, but that's probably the best we can suggest at this time.

Please know that we value all your submissions, and your help in making Presterity a useful reference work!